Tag: Patterning

Patterning is one of my favourite drum apps on the iPad and this lates version adds some really cool new stuff with Cloud Kits, Drum Kit Sharing for Patterning.

Download & share user-created samples with Cloud Kits. Browse a growing collection of free drum kits, searchable by artist, genre, and popularity. Listen to audio previews, upvote, and download kits directly in the app. Upload custom drum kits with your own artwork and share in Patterning and on Facebook or other social networks.

Also :

Built-in Dropbox Support! You can now browse Dropbox in the app, allowing importing of multiple audio files without leaving Patterning. Available from the “IMPORT” menu of the Sample Library.

When deleting a drum kit you can opt to delete samples at the same time.

I always think it’s difficult to tell you which were the best apps in any year, and 2016 is no different at all. What works for me as a great app won’t work for other people and vice-versa, so it all seems a little pointless. However, what I can tell you is which apps were important to me this year. I think that might be more interesting (or maybe not), and it’s certainly easier to do from my perspective.

So without further messing around, here are the apps that I used a lot, or found intriguing, or for whatever other reason, mattered.

Without a doubt Auxy is an app that I can’t do without, at least not currently anyway. I really love it. It works for me and just fits with how I think and work right now. I’m not saying that this will always be the case, but for now me and Auxy, we’re good. I also really like the sound packs that they’ve been releasing. I got them both and love them.

Moog’s Model 15 is on my list for a totally different reason than Auxy is. Model 15 is here because it’s one of those apps that I keep fiddling with and getting into and then leaving for a bit, then coming back to. I don’t know if you do that, but I certainly do. I like Model 15 and I’d really like to do something useful with it, but so far I haven’t. Who knows, maybe in 2017 I will.

NOIZ you’ll know from Studio Amplify. It’s a great app for making stuff even if you’ve no idea how to make stuff, and I’m all for that. Of course the nice chaps from Studio Amplify now have KRFT in beta and I’ve been playing with that recently. It is going to be awesome. I mentioned it not so long ago here, and I’m hoping to be able to tell you lots more soon enough.

I think that these apps are going to have a really bright future and are going to help users to make things in ways that they hadn’t thought about before.

I’m a fan of Mr HumbleTune’s apps, music, and design style. I think it’s great, and for good reason. His apps are amazing, and, pretty much everywhere too. I really like two of them though, nils, and frekvens. They really let you mangle sound, but in a good way, in a way that doesn’t hurt. I’m sure that other people find themselves coming back to the same FX apps over and over, and frekvens is one of those for me.

5. All things Korg

I can’t help myself but say that I do love Korg’s apps. They’ve done well this year. We’ve had good updates and new apps like ODYSSEi and iWAVESTATION. My personal favs are Gadget and iDS-10 though. Again I find myself coming back to these time and time again. I bet some of you do too.

I think that Sabre has been a bit overlooked and that’s a shame. The AC Sabre is an amazing gestural performance tool for the iPhone and hasn’t really had the attention it should have had. I’d like to do a bit more with it myself next year as I think I’ve only barely scratched the surface of what it can do for me.

I posted on ROTOR and the tangible controllers yesterday, but it also deserves a mention here. I like modular apps but ROTOR (and Reactable mobile before it) seem to provide a more accessible route into modular than a lot of other apps in that genre. Now that ROTOR has the tangible controllers with it I’m hoping to get a bit more time to devote to it soon.

Unusual apps and alternative interfaces are very important to me. So Fluxpad is assured a place in my list. It gives you a different way to interface with sound and that in itself is important. I like that Fluxpad is playful and easy to use and yet at the same time a highly capable and flexible app for manipulating samples.

There had to be a DAW in the list and it’s Cubasis 2.0. It’s been a big help to me on a project that I’m working on so it’s in my list. However, there was stiff competition from n-Track Studio 8 which arrived quite recently. It will be interesting to see how some of the big, and one or two little, DAWs survive in 2017.

I love drum apps. Patterning is another app that just fits with my workflow. It’s just intuitive and fluid and it makes perfect sense to me. I can’t say that about all drum apps I’m afraid, but Patterning is probably one of the few go to drum apps that stays on my iPad. I’d love there to be an iPhone version too.

You might find this one a little strange, but more will become apparent soon. For now I’ll tell you that I love Wotja’s ability to create an ambient soundscape from a few words. It’s simple to tailor and tweak to do exactly what you want too.

I’ve also found myself coming back to Mixtikl recently and really getting into that app again. I think that these generative technologies are so deep that it can be easy to get lost. However, I think it’s worth it to dive in and explore and I’d like to do more of that in 2017 with all of Intermorphic’s tools.

Last and by no means least is Skram from Liine. I’m a fan of apps that make the process of creating music simpler and more immediate. To me that’s really important. I thought Skram was great when it first came out and the latest update has made it even more usable. I hope that it keeps going and brings more and more people into making music, and I’d also really like to see an iPhone version of it too.

So that’s 12 apps (more if I’m honest) that mattered to me and continue to do so. I hope you found that interesting. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments.

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Here’s what Olympia Noise Co have to say about Patterning 1.1, and it says it all …

In this update we’ve added a ton of new features to improve your creative workflow — including audio export, new and improved sync options, a more useful timeline, MIDI mappings, as well as interface improvements that make Patterning even more fun and inspiring to work with. As always, let us know if you have any questions or run into any issues. support@olympianoiseco.com

Audio Export
Patterning now includes a highly configurable audio export function for getting your drum tracks out of Patterning and into the next stage of your process. It’s easy to turn your beats into perfect audio loops or entire songs in .WAV format. Bounce individual tracks or the main mix and save your files to AudioShare, iTunes File Sharing or using “Open in….” to save to Dropbox or other apps.

MIDI Mapping
Map your hardware MIDI controller to control mixer and sample settings, trigger pattern changes, and more. Assign CC’s, notes, or program changes to parameters using the MIDI learn function, and fine tune parameter ranges with the MIDI configuration menu. MIDI mappings can be imported from other songs to easily reuse your favorite mappings.

Inter-App Audio Track Output
Patterning now supports individual Inter-App Audio outputs for each track as well as the master output. Connect up tracks to Audiobus, AUM, or another Inter-App Audio host to apply effects to individual tracks.

MIDI Output Enhancements
In addition to notes, MIDI enabled tracks can now send automation data in the form of CC or pitch bend messages. Track layers are assigned to MIDI destinations according to the MIDI standard. MIDI Track settings can be imported from other songs for easy reuse.

A New Timeline
Patterning’s timeline has been updated, making the creation of songs a whole lot easier and more fun. You can now make multiple selections, and use “duplicate,” “duplicate insert,” and “duplicate at end” tools to quickly repeat sections of the timeline. In addition, each timeline block now has a “reset rotation” option to allow patterns to snap to their beginnings in the timeline. This is useful for rotating or odd meter patterns, as well as creating stutters or fills in the timeline.

Sample Preview
Preview samples in the sample library! To enable, toggle the speaker icon in the top right of the sample library. Preview uses the current sample settings (pitch, pan, effect sends, etc) to help you tweak your sounds.

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Just a warning to let you know that the lovely people at Olympia Noise Co have given me some codes for their amazing apps. I’ve got 8 codes to give away over the next hour and as ever, when they’re gone they’re gone, so please keep an eye out on the site and not on twitter as the codes will be here although you’ll see a tweet every time they get posted.

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So, last week was a really busy week for me, but one of the highlights for me was on Wednesday when we ran the first SoundLab session of this year. This was quite a different from the sessions we run before as we’re taking a different approach and one that we hope will be really useful to the music technology as a whole.

Since the SoundLab project started we’ve utilised a wide variety of digital technology for creating music. The first part of the project was all about understanding issues around accessibility in digital music technology, and that’s still a very big part of what we’re about. But now we’re adding something new, and this is what we were piloting with Blocs Wave, MiMu and AlphaSphere on Wednesday.

The latest iteration of SoundLab is about inviting in new and existing music technologies and working with those companies alongside our artists and participants so that we can provide useful feedback on how those technologies and products can either be improved to make them more accessible or can be presented in such a way that they become more accessible.

At SoundLab we have a unique perspective on music technology. Our artists and participants love making music and love trying out new technology. So we’re very able to provide good feedback. Whilst information and feedback on accessibility is important it actually has real commercial benefits, because when you can make music technology more accessible you can get to a wider audience, and that means selling more, which is really important if you want to keep you business going.

At SoundLab we want to provide real actionable and commercial feedback to developers and music technology companies, and that’s what we’re planning to do this year.

In this session we worked with some amazing companies, Blocs Wave, AlphaSphere, and MiMu, and they were all really interesting to work with.

MiMu Gloves ….

I’ve been interested in the MiMu gloves for a long time now and we were really lucky to be able to have Kris Halpin with us for the day to demo the gloves and work with us to show how they can be used.

I have to say that since I’ve seen these gloves for real I am just so impressed with how they can be used and how expressive they are. But the gloves are real instruments, not just a gestural toy. To learn to use them takes time and care. The gloves can deliver some amazing expression to an artist and we were only able to scratch the surface of their potential last week.

Blocs Wave …

When Novation announced their new Blocs brand and the Blocs Wave app I knew that this was going to be important for mobile music. I’m a huge fan of apps that democratise music making and Blocs Wave does just that.

So it was great to have Toby from Blocs with us for the day.

Blocs is such an immediate app for creating sound and enjoying it so it was really good to work with them for the day, and especially it being only a day or so after Blocs Wave added Ableton Link integration, which is excellent in itself.

Lastly we worked with something new from AlphaSphere ….

We’ve been using an AlphaSphere at SoundLab for quite some time now. Last week we were working with something quite new from them. In fact so new that I can’t even tell you about it at all! Even so, it was great to be able to work with AlphaSphere at SoundLab.

It was a great day and we made a lot of sound!

Bit it wasn’t just about those technologies. On top of all of that we had an amazing jam session using Link.

Link has been a massive step forward for SoundLab. It’s allowed us to integrate apps and hardware so easily now. In this session we used these apps: